– fry the sugar in a pot until it turnes a bit caramel, then pour the shot of brandy and mix fast; cut the apples and quince in cubes, cut the onion in little pieces and add all to the pot; add the ginger to the pot.

– fry until the fruit are getting a bit softer; add the apple vinegar and the apple juice at the end and leave everything to fry for another 5-8 minutes at a low temperature. As soon as the fruit are soft, add the spices according to taste and pour the mixture fast into jars, close the jars immediately and leave them to cool out in a cool place.

(the recipe is taken from the book “Die Einkochbibel” from Ulrich Jakob Zeni which we highly recommend!!)

So we managed to fix some problems we had with our last batches. We figured out how to make the soaps less creamy and also successfully reached the hard consistency of normal soaps, it took a bit of try-and-error, but we are very proud to have finnally done a batch of soaps that turned out in the consistency exactly how we wanted in the beginning!!

This soap was done for a friend that has very sensitive skin, that dries fast. So we used a lot of powerful mosturizers as main ingredients – olive oil, almond oil, shea butter, cacao butter, honey. Because of the big quantity of hard fats (shea butter, cacao butter) the soap doesn’t really make bubbles. We think this is a good compromise for a strong moisturizing soap and we were extremely happy to get the feedback from our friend – the soap works! 🙂

This is our version of a Christmas soap: for soft skin in the cold winter 🙂 Try it out and have lovely holidays!

INGREDIENTS:

*rose water

*honey

*olive oil, almond oil, cacao butter, shea butter, rapeseed oil

*spirulina, orange powder, cinammon

*essential oils: cinammon, orange, fir tree

~ ~ ~

Except for the cinnamon and the essential oils, all ingredients are BIO. Why are the cinammon and essential oils not bio? Well, the cinammon we had it already in our kitchen, a gift from my mom. Yes, its not bio, but we dont want to encourage waste either, so since we already had it in our kitchen, we might as well have used it. With the essential oils is another story. We would love to use bio essential oils. Unfortunately, they are just unaffordable for us right now – the quantity is very little and the price very big in all bio shops we checked out so far. It would just be too expensive for us at the moment.

(If you however know any alternative to this, or know some small local producers that make essential oils and sell them cheaper, please get back to us!!)

ORANGE POWDER

..is also selfmade. It’s basically the dried skins of bio oranges and grined into powder. It definetly gives the soaps a nice smell AND coloring (which is great!). The brownish part in the middle of the soaps contains a mix of this orange powder and cinammon.

SPIRULINA

Spirulina is actually a greenish microalgae and has been used due to its healing properties back since the ancient tribes of Mayans and Aztecs. It is high in proteins and amino acids, so it has a great nutritional and moisturizing effect!!

OILS

We chose olive oil and almond oil due to the very high hydration properties. Shea butter and cacao butter are obvious moisturizers, so all in all, this soap is intended to make your skin creamy and soft 🙂

!! Because of the cinammon-based ingredients, this soap is NOT recommended for pregnant women (because it can cause contractions) !!

This is our first successfully done soap and we’re very happy with it. Hooray!

Ingredients:

(all the ingredients, except the essential oils, are bio ingredients and we encourage everybody to use bio ingredients when making cosmetic products. the reason is obvious: if u dont like eating pesticides and other nasty stuff, you should also not put them on your skin:)

We wanted to combine a peeling soap with a cleansing one. This is why we chose the combination of coffee (which acts as a scrub) with the green clay (which has a good cleaning effect). This type of soap is good for people with a difficult skin, that needs a bit of extra attention. However, we also use it in our bathroom as a daily soap and we find it great!

GREEN CLAY:

The green clay is a very common ingredient in many cosmetic products (especially face masks!). It is very beneficial for the detoxification of the skin, by removing the impurities from inside the pores and by tightening the pores, tonifying the skin and removing the dead skin cells. It is recommended for people with skin problems or acneic skin.

COFFEE:

Coffee works, first of all, as a vasodilator. Secondly, it is full of antioxidants (which heal and restore damaged skin) and has the very useful property of dehydrating fatty cells (thus, making it very good as a body scrub against cellulite!)

* because of the cinammon essential oil, NOT RECOMMENDED for pregnant women!!!

*bonus*

The soap surprised us by having a very strong nutty fragrance, so we will definetly use the nuts oil again!!! 🙂